Switchblade – Motorized Gladiators

A game in which gladiators in a future world battle each other on vehicles: 10 differently armed vehicles battle each other in a vast arena and all ten vehicles were designed with Cinema 4D.

A battlefield filled with obstacles and unexpected elements in a not too distant future. Vehicles armed to the teeth compete explosively. Switchblade is a game from the English publisher Lucid Games and mixes familiar themes with an explosive range of action. Of the 15 fantastically designed vehicles 10 were designed entirely by Michael Tschernjajew, a talented German artist who uses Cinema 4D to bring his fantasy and design talent to fruition.

Michael and Lucid Games came together quite unexpectedly. Michael’s work at Artstation and Behance reflected the mechanical style Lucid was looking for and after ordering a few samples of his work, they gave him the job of designing vehicles for Switchblade. The briefing was simple: the game needed armed vehicles with four wheels for armed motorsport with a unique, heroic look.

To avoid building each vehicle from scratch while maintaining stylistic consistency and speed up workflow, Michael created an assembly kit made up of various components. “Things such as antennae, suspension and sensors were created according to the client’s wishes and I had more time to work on the actual design,” remembers Michael.

“While creating the designs I worked a lot with the new SSAO and with OpenGL. The viewport renderings looked just like the models displayed by the actual game engine, which gave the client an outstanding impression of the final models at a very early stage.”

“The ideas were realized using Cinema 4D’s modeling tools, which offered the right tool for basically every task: The new Knife tools, the Magnet tool, Edge Smooth and Polygon Shift features all gave me absolute control for modeling. This made it easy to turn concepts into reality!”

Since Lucid works with Maya, an exchange format had to be agreed upon that let the models be imported seamlessly. “We decided to use the FBX format since Cinema 4D has an integrated exporter for this format. The team at Lucid was able to easily import and edit the models I had created in Cinema 4D,” says Michael.Michael worked about a year on Switchblade and now that the project has been completed and the game is heading to retailers, his assessment of Cinema 4D is that it’s “… fast, efficient and indispensable for bringing my designs to life!”